Dear Inner Circle,

Not one face was familiar when I walked in this morning. There was a lady dressed as Father Christmas doing some vigorous exercises, I guess, in preparation for December. There was a fellow squatted on the ground, holding his head in his hands like his world had utterly collapsed. One fellow made a bee line for me and said, “Are you in charge?” “That’s the rumour,” I said, “although I spend most of my days doing what I’m told”. My humour was lost on him. He said, “I’ve been studying the First World War…” “Well, let’s have a cup of tea and talk about it because it’s one of my favourite subjects”. We’d not said more than a couple of sentences before I realised he knew nothing of the First World War. “Well tell me this then,” he said, “What happens when we die, you know, where do we go and how will I know if I can trust you?” My sense was that he was about as interested in this question as he was the First World War. I said, “What’s up? Are you afraid of dying?” “The last time I felt like this,” he said, “I swallowed six bottles of pills”. Finally! There is nothing more human than a conversation. This man was able to name his fear and we’ve been able to find him some ongoing support.

When they were clearing homeless people from Martin Place last Saturday, I happened to be on the spot. My understanding is that the City of Sydney have been most supportive of the people sleeping rough and have shown great sensitivity to this group. I also understand that the builders on the site have left the need to clear people out of the area until the very last moment. Building is at a stage where it would be unsafe to allow people to stay put. On Saturday that was a massive team from the State Department of Family and Community Services, doing all they could to find better options for people. I’ve heard and read some criticism this week but in my view, good will and sensitivity marked every part of...[read more]

Dear Inner Circle,

About 90 fresh faces filled our Community Hall for an orientation of new volunteers this week. It's always an honour to speak at these events, although on this occasion, I was squashing the honour between two demanding appointments. Walking into the hall, I was astonished, as I always am, that so many people are keen to be involved with us at Wayside. I was handed a microphone and began looking for my first words when a face in the front row made time stop. In a moment I cared nothing about the pressing appointment in front of me, or even what I was meant to be doing at that very time. A stunning, confident, warm face burst to life when our eyes met. The first time I’d laid eyes on her, years ago, there was no eye contact; the woman couldn't look up from the floor. She was in real trouble. A marriage of abuse and isolation had driven her mad to the point that she burnt her house down with no care about whether the fire took her husband's life or her own. The day we met, she had condemned herself as the lowest of human beings but standing in front of a hall full of people was a young woman, fully alive and keen to serve others at Wayside. Sometimes looking into a face can lead you to, "Wow!" It's awe. I read once that the word, "awe" comes from the sound of our breath when we lift back our heads in wonder.

Our chefs and volunteer cooks at Wayside really do make their food with love. At Bondi people are offered menus and receive table service from the best volunteer wait staff in Sydney. All main dishes cost in the order of one to two dollars but the food is worthy of any restaurant in the main street. I've seen plenty of people taking photos of their food because it is so beautifully presented. One of our chefs at Kings Cross puts so much into his cooking that he thinks his food has the power to heal. Yesterday he sent some chocolate biscuits to the cafe and he called them "electro-choc-therapy-cookies". At the counter of the cafe...[read more]

Dear Inner Circle,

A text popped up on my phone today from a young woman whom I hadn’t heard from in over a year. When I first met her, she was only 11, a tiny, withdrawn girl whose beautiful smile could light up a room, yet her eyes rarely lifted from the floor. We lived next door to her in Mt Druitt and she would often come over to our house to talk with my wife Lisa. Initially I thought she came to play with our young daughters, who simply adored her. Yet in time, I realised she was escaping a household where abuse was a daily occurrence. It’s difficult for me to understand a father who could scream at his beautiful children until 2 in the morning. It’s even more difficult to understand why some nights she would take it upon herself to deliberately bait her father when he returned home in a drunken rage so that he wouldn’t turn on her mum and younger siblings. When we moved away from Mt Druitt this girl was the person we found it hardest to leave, we even quietly begged her to come with us. Her message today stopped me in my tracks. It wasn’t a cry for help, it wasn’t a list of the latest failings of her father, it was a message full of hope. She thanked us for the years of love we’d shown her and talked of the happy times she’d spent in our home. She told me that she’d just finished a bushwalk through Tasmania with her school, a feat she’d never thought she’d accomplish. I’ve re-read her text about one hundred times today. Sometimes it’s the smallest things that leave a lasting impact.

When something human happens, at least two people are changed. This week a searching email made its way to my inbox from the partner of a fellow who was living on the cold streets of Melbourne 20 years ago. I’d walked past him on the same corner every day on my way to work until eventually I gave in, and ignoring some of my better judgement, asked him if he wanted to stay in our spare room for a few weeks. We took him in off the streets, but we...[read more]

Dear Inner Circle,

A gorgeous young fellow who makes the world a better place just by waking up in the morning, was in the café today after some months away. I was delighted to see him but concerned because he’d clearly lost a lot of weight. I asked him about his health but he insisted first on discussing my health. I’ve had a few challenges with health this year and this fellow knew enough to prevent me from switching the attention back to him. As we talked, the kindest eyes in the world kept focus on me. I could have been talking to my father or my daughter. Eventually I needed to keep moving and I thanked him in a lighted-hearted way to almost balance the intense love in my face. His words too were light-hearted, and yet we both knew the depth and weight of the care we exchanged. “You’re a gentleman and a scholar,” I said. “I have my moments,” he replied.

A couple of weeks ago, our staff at Bondi travelled up to my office in an unusual gesture because they were so concerned about a woman whose situation was so dire, they believed it was a matter of life or death. The small unit in which she lived had become infested with bedbugs and all manner of insects. The person was handicapped and unable to move without the aid of a chair and someone to assist. Various agencies had been involved but they had mostly ceased any support out of concern for the health of their own staff. Our staff at Bondi had badgered government departments and various private agencies to the point of becoming a total nuisance. No-one felt it was their job to help. The person themselves had so lost the will to live that in conversations with our people, as bugs crawled over her face, no effort was made to even brush off the vermin. Wayside has no budget or capacity for such an emergency and yet I was convinced that death was a real possibility of inaction. I have a band of angels who have indicated from time to time that I can call on them in extraordinary circumstances. My...[read more]

Dear Inner Circle,

Amazingly, culture seems to hold memory that has an affect long after the memory of actual events has passed. Isn’t it astonishing that children still sing, “Ring-a-ring o' roses, a pocket full of posies, a-tishoo! a-tishoo! We all fall down.” This rhyme was first published in 1881 but its origin seems to be much earlier. In the days of the Black Death or in the great plagues, it was believed that the plague could be caught through the sense of smell and so people carried rose petals in their pockets, but as soon as someone began sneezing, “we all fall down”. It is believable that this song is a living memory of the many plagues that swept Europe in the seventeenth-century. In 1665, nearly a third of London’s population was lost to the plague. That the great fire happened the next year makes me think that anyone of my age, has had a pretty lucky run. No one remembers these things yet we still sing the song.

This country began as a British prison and church attendance was essentially a punishment imposed by the establishment upon uncivilised prisoners. The early magistrates were often parsons who were rarely noted for the depth of their compassion. Rev Samuel Marsden was known to impose 500 lashes for relatively minor offences. It meant that an offender would be lashed until their back was pulp, carried away until their back healed and then returned for more. It might take five sessions before the sentence was completed. Do you think this early memory is not retained in our culture? We’ve long forgotten Marsden but when clergy are portrayed on TV, we usually see a sanctimonious character that is usually privileged and either pathetically irrelevant or viciously narrow.

Keep reading here.  

Dear Inner Circle,

Exactly a year ago, I stood in the battle field of Fromelles, France. Fromelles was of particular interest to me because there was such shedding of Australian blood there. I’m not sure if bloodbaths ever have redeeming features, but this particular battle it seems, was designed to achieve nothing other than a distraction. It was hoped that this battle would prevent Germany from sending large numbers of their soldiers south in preparation for the massive culmination to be known as the Battle of the Somme. The plan failed. Fromelles was so poorly executed that Germany quickly recognised it as a decoy and moved their troops south anyway. Some of the soldiers killed at Fromelles had fought at Gallipoli but many were fresh from Australia with no fighting experience. I stood for ages in front of the grave of Private John Gordon, who enlisted in his older brother’s name, and who had landed in France in June 1916 and died on this field a month later. He was fifteen years and ten months old.

Very few Australian families a hundred years ago could imagine, let alone visit, the places where I stood last year. At Pozières, near the famous windmill sight, I found you could wander into any of the peaceful-looking fields, which were at the time freshly ploughed, and fill the boot of a car with shrapnel if you were so inclined. One hundred years later and still the ground is peppered with metal, now twisted and muddy, but then white hot and cutting through flesh like a butter knife. How many thousands of Australian people had wished to have stood where I stood, trying to understand what kind of circumstance robbed them of their boys, husbands and fathers? Many times, I stood quietly and shut my eyes as if I was communicating with thousands of Australians now gone, to say, “This is where it was”. Standing in peaceful fields, it’s hard to imagine soldiers deafened by artillery night and day without a break, wet, muddy and waiting for an order to...[read more]

Dear Inner Circle,

All my life, I’ve nursed a special fear of needles. Never for a minute did I entertain the idea that I might put a needle into someone that I loved. My son became a diabetic when only six years old and while he was adjusting to the idea that only needles would keep him alive, I was adjusting to the idea that I’d have to learn how to give him injections. The day came when he was about to be discharged from hospital and I had to demonstrate that I could draw up insulin and inject it. I sat my little boy on a bench and gave him a long lecture about how, if I could only make him live by injecting into myself instead, that I would surely do it. It was no metaphor. After my longish lecture, I pushed the needle into his leg. After pushing the plunger, I withdrew the needle and threw my arms around my dear boy, stabbing him in the back. I thought I was the worst father in history.

Years later my daughter was wheeled out of an operating theatre to a bed where I was waiting for her. Initially she looked ok, but in just minutes, her face turned a sickly yellow with stark blue lines across her face, almost like a road map. I panicked and called for help. A nurse fetched a doctor who looked at my girl and proclaimed her to be “fine,” without even hesitating on his walk past her bed. I was both relieved, wanting to think the best of his professional judgement, and also horrified that he didn’t seem to understand that this was the loveliest little girl in the world, who in my view, ought not look like a road map.

Keep reading here.

Dear Inner Circle,

A four-year-old girl stood next to her mother who had come to see me about a relatively trivial matter. The face of the little girl! Anger, fight, sadness and resentment all were clearly present in the face of this baby who clearly didn’t want to be in the room. I knew this little girl, somehow. My heart leapt from my chest at my first glance. This meeting happened many years ago and today, this little face is still with me. She didn’t speak and I’m not sure she could speak. She made noises. She seemed to be keeping her hands behind her back. “What’s going on with this little girl’s hands?” I asked. The mother pulled one of the hands to the front to reveal burns in the pattern of clear concentric circles. The little hand was dreadfully blistered. I could only imagine these burns came from a stove cooktop. I looked with horror to the mother’s face and she said, “She tells lies!”

I tell you that story because I’ve just been similarly captured by another face that will no doubt live with me to my dying day. Today I met a young person, perhaps in their late teens or early twenties and we struck up a conversation about gender identity. The words we exchanged were of peripheral importance to this meeting. Speaking was difficult, a stammering mixed with the sounds that a toothless mouth makes when forming words. But the face! Parallel lines met today. I know nothing of the backstory and yet I know everything. I lost something today. I lost all the things that I was worried about on my way to Wayside today. I lost my health issues; I lost the agenda of my next executive meeting; I lost the philosophy that I’d read last night, but I didn’t lose me. Actually, I found me in this precious face, contorted by hurt and yet with warmth and presence. My contribution to this meeting was nothing and everything. I gained nothing and everything.

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